Religious Right Groups
Light Educational Ministries
| Leadership: | Peter Frogley, Director. Frogley is also an ordained Minister and currently pastors Ginnindera Christian Church in Canberra. |
| Date formed: | 1979 |
| Area of operation: | Initially based in SA, but now has headquarters in the ACT. |
| Estimated membership: | Offers a form of ‘personal affiliation’, rather than membership. Provides educational supplies to Christian schools and ‘homeschools’ throughout Australia, so could probably claim the broadly-defined ’support’ of several thousand people. |
| Finances: | Essentially, LEM operates as a successful small business. Annual personal affiliate fee is $45; annual school affiliate fee is $2 per student. Most income derives from commercial sales of various kinds (several thousand books are stocked in a range of categories.) |
| Main objectives: | Basically, to promote LEM’s Christian Reconstructionist version of education throughout Australia. More specifically, ‘to produce God-centred and Bible-based curricula’ and ‘to distribute and instruct in their use’ and ‘to promote and assist in the establishment of Christian schools and home education’ (Serving You, 2004, 6). One should add: to ‘educate’ conservative Christian families in Reconstructionist ideology. |
| Main activities: | Selling literature and other resources, advising Christian educators, addressing meetings. |
| Links with other groups: | Frogley and LEM are favourably known to most other Australian Religious Right groups. He has worked with many of their leaders and is generally regarded as the expert in this field. |
| Publications: | LEM’s major periodical is the quarterly magazine Light of Life. It also publishes resource catalogues and some of its own educational texts, leaflets and pamphlets. |
| Sample quotes: | Backward Christian Soldiers by Gary North … $10.90 … North calls this his action manual for Christians to take dominion of the earth through a vision of victory and a program of Christian Reconstruction. (LEM Theological and Reference Catalogue, March 2004, 5) |
| Genesis by Rousas J. Rushdoony … $76.15 … Theology without six-day creationism becomes alien to the God of Scripture because it turns from the God who acts and whose word is the creative word and the word of power, to a belief in process as god. The god of non-creationists is the creation of man and a figment of their imagination. (ibid., 9) | |
| (James Dobson of Focus on the Family may be an international Religious Right leader, but many dominionist Christians view him as a kind of heretic): James Dobson’s Gospel of Self-Esteem and Psychology by Martin and Deidre Bobgan … Demonstrates that some of Dobson’s basic assumptions and many specific teachings originated from secular psychological theorists whose opinions are based on godless foundations. Self-esteem and psychology too often supersede sin, salvation and sanctification. They are another gospel. (ibid., 14) |
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| Assessment: | The aim of Christian Reconstructionism is to turn countries like Australia into full-blown ‘Christian nations’, with political and legal systems based on the law of Moses (see articles concerning ‘theocracy’ on this site). This is a long-term project involving the education of several generations, but LEM is trying to make a start. |
| Contact details: | P O Box 3284 Belconnen MDC ACT 2617 Showroom: Mt Rogers Community Centre, 55 Crofts Cres., Spence ACT www.lem.com.au |
